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Celebrating Illustration, Design, Cartoon and Comic Art of the Mid-20th Century

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Denver Gillen is another mid-century illustrator whose work I have always admired. Gillen often incorporated compelling, atmospheric and distinctively stylized landscapes in his illustrations.

Gillen was a favourite of sport fishing and hunting magazine editors, creating many interior illustrations and covers.

Because Gillen himself had no interest in hunting, he consciously focused on the grace and nobility of the animals in his illustrations...

... and of course, looking beyond the subject matter, we see once again Gillen's beautifully realized landscapes.

Other artists might find tricks or shortcuts to represent the background landscape in their work as a symbolic prop. But even when creating textbook illustrations like the one below (which Gillen's daughter told me he found tedious to do) he cut no corners.

Later in his life, after moving to Mexico to semi-retire, Gillen created remarkable gallery paintings celebrating the people and landscapes of his adopted home.

Monday, July 30, 2012

I just returned from a week of plein air painting in Northern Ontario so landscapes are very much on my mind. I hope you'll indulge me while I continue with this theme, as it's what currently is really inspiring my own creative efforts!

Many of the great mid-century illustrators had a real knack for painting landscapes, even if it was in service to an advertising campaign or incidental to the story they were illustrating.

One such artist whose work I've always truly admired was James R. Bingham. Here are a few examples of his prowess in painting landscapes. Set aside the subject or purpose of each of these images and just study these amazing landscape interpretations. In each case, you'll see how Bingham truly captured the setting in form, light and colour!

Monday, July 23, 2012

I'm taking a week off to do some plein air painting in "Group of Seven Country", so while I'm gone, I'll share a few scans from another Grumbacher Library "How to" book I found earlier this year at a thrift shop.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

We've seen a wide variety of small spots this week that demonstrate just how conscientious mid-century illustrators were about doing their best work - despite knowing that work would be printed at a size far too small to be properly appreciated with the naked eye.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the remarkable full colour paintings done for many mid-'50s magazine ads. These miniature scenes were reproduced at about the size of a postage stamp...

... but just look at the effort that went into rendering them.

Here's another ad - several small full colour spots done in a somewhat different technique...

Charlie described these assignments (which he painted in gouache at just two or three times up) as being "considered by agencies and by illustrators as a real 'plum' account on which to work."

"[The client] seemed to me remarkably relaxed about product details," wrote Charlie. "The scenes and product details were very much left to the artist to create."

For Charlie, not only were these fun and lucrative assignments, they provided a young west coast artist more used to working on regional assignments the rare opportunity of sharing the stage with his 'celebrity' peers because Kaiser's ads ran in wide circulation national magazines like the Saturday Evening Post, Newsweek, Time, etc.

I'll just bet Charlie got a kick from seeing his signature on those ads in those publications. Although, of course, being ever the humble practitioner of his art, you'd hardly know the work was signed if you didn't have our ability to blow up those tiny panels to a decent size. (See it in the bottom RH corner of the image above?)

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Yesterday we saw some tiny black & white battle scenes, originally published at just one by two inches. Today let's look at some more miniature illustrations - this time in colour and in what I'll describe broadly as a variety of "1950s storybook styles."

First, here are five vignettes from a 1952 ad for M&Ms, also published at about one by two inches.